In a storage area network (SAN), a SAN management application monitors and manages manageable entities in the SAN. The manageable entities include storage arrays, connectivity devices, and hosts. Typically, software components known as agents execute on the hosts for gathering, reporting, and monitoring the manageable entities in the SAN. The manageable entities are responsive to the agents and report various status metrics back to the agents, and receive control information from the agents. A management server executes the SAN management application, and oversees the agents. The management server also connects to a console having a graphical user interface (GUI) for receiving and displaying operator parameters with a SAN operator.
The SAN is therefore an interconnection of manageable entities operative to provide mass data storage and retrieval services to a user community. In the SAN, various data collection and reporting operations occur at various times. Some of these operations occur at regular intervals, and others are operative on a demand basis. Such operations may include backups, reconfiguration, administrative reports, and other operations concerned with the operation and maintenance of the SAN. In a large SAN, such operations can be voluminous and frequent, and are often executed in a batch, or offline mode and/or at off hours (i.e. overnight) so as to minimize interference with optimal SAN performance.